this was probably the worst-coached game i've ever seen by flip, and that's saying something. i normally don't get upset over regular season games or losses, but my goodness, this was atrocious...flat out terrible. this game was lost by 2 people - flip saunders and rip hamilton. i'll go to the coaching last and talk about the players first...

Agree with all of your points Hog. I expect Flip to get his %%%%% chewed out by Joe on the plane ride to Sacramento. They almost lost Sunday's sonics game because the starters were over played in the 3rd qtr and tonight he plays them the whole qtr and then sends Rip and Sheed out to play the first 90 seconds of the 4th.???

Billups was injured slightly in the third, left him in...Tay and Dice were ailing and they got over played.

Flip might be on to something though, because this bench can't seem to play anyway especially when there are more than 3 of them in there at once....how about a trade???? Flip Jr and Nazr are as bad as we already knew they were. We need a force in the middle as big as Kevin Duckworth

Agree with all of your points Hog. I expect Flip to get his %%%%% chewed out by Joe on the plane ride to Sacramento. They almost lost Sunday's sonics game because the starters were over played in the 3rd qtr and tonight he plays them the whole qtr and then send Rip and Sheed out to play the first 90 seconds of the 4th.???

Billups was injured slightly in the third, left him in...Tay and Dice were ailing and they got over played.

Flip might be on to something though, because this bench can't seem to play anyway especially when there are more than 3 of them in there at once....how about a trade???? Flip Jr and Nazr are as bad as we already knew they were. We need a force in the middle as big as Kevin Duckworth

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I don't think it's as much of bench being in there as it is a couple of crappy players that keep messing things up. Nazr is useless. Flip Jr is having hot and cold streaks. The 2nd unit needs Chauncey or Tay keeping things together, it seemed to work before.

Most of Rip's misses were close or in the paint. Can't blame him for trying. It just wasn't working out.

You are correct to blame the coach for leaving the cold hand in and calling so many plays for him when he wasn't feelin' it.

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Rip was forcing too much. I know he wants to win and help the team, but sometimes he needs to take a step back and leave scoring up to someone else. If he can't, Flip needs to sub for him. Simple as that.

Good writeups by several people, thanks. Not much positive to say about Flip Saunder's coaching. I certainly won't add anything positive myself. Here is a negative though. At this point, the decision to keep Flip Saunders is making the Piston front office and the owner look well, lets just say real bad and be polite about it. This guy is just flat out rebelling all the way about the youth movement thing.

Afflalo got to play, and he played some good solid D, and gave a noticeable energy boost to the Pistons while on the floor. But it did not matter. After his 4 minutes or so, Flip Murray got the rest of the backup guard minutes. Prince played just a bit in the backcourt too.

Flip Murray had a decent game on offense. Some scattered decisions, but some good ones too. Plus he made that triple as time expired in the 3rd to tie the game up. And started the 4th quarter with a layup. On defense, we just could not do anything on defense with Flip in the game. However, no, I won't pin all that on him. The fact is that Hayes is a bit slow footed, Dyess is too, and Mohammed resembles a stationary object quite closely. This is the kind of defense Saunders chose to put in in the first half. He did better in the 2nd half, leaving Mohammed out. (But negated that positive by not playing Afflalo in the 2nd half. In total, our bench was horrid, with mediocre guard play and no defense.

Dyess apparently is injured. He has been overplayed, but I do not know if that is contributing to his injury, or maybe keeping it from healing. Dyess hates not to play. But Flip Saunders is the guy overplaying this guy. I hate to say it, cause I would never wish Dyess any pain, but if Dyess can't play, it means Maxiell starts - which is a good thing. Flip Saunders is still on a personal campaign to ice Jason by giving him very irregular minutes. Why he did not play the end of this game is a mystery. Sure, he ain't perfect, but he was the only guy we had blocking shots. Just before he came out he blocked a shot on one end and scored in the post on the other. Unless he got injured and this was not mentioned. (or was it. Kind of confused on that point as they did say Maxiell was injured -but while talking about the Dyess injury - so I am not sure.)

Hayes scored in the post a bit, and he made a triple that was simply too late to do us any good. Not enough for to make up for his lack of speed on D.

Rip made some shots, but missed a lot too. This included missing one completely unguarded layup. On D, he did not help much as he was just a bad matchup tonight - a rare thing for him really, but just maybe Afflalo was the right guy for this game. I believe we could have won just with Afflalo's better D.

Tay was more aggressive. He did make an outside shot or two, but did most of his damage going right to the basket.
Billups had a so so game. He made some shots, made some nice feeds. But he also missed a lot of shots.

Sheed had a pretty darn good game on offense, especially so in the first half, making triples and scoring inside too. His defense? Pretty good when Maxiell was playing along side him. Not good enough to compensate for guys like Hayes, Dyess playing along side him.

Let me see, starters overplayed again, Amir did not play, Afflalo limited to one quick appearance. Tricky (My new name for Flip) gave the illusion of playing youth by giving Afflalo that early stint in the 1st quarter, but its pretty obvious what he is doing. Five minutes for Amir last game, but no Afflalo. About five minutes for Afflalo this game, but no Amir. And meanwhile doing his level headed best to ice out JMAX. JMAX would have played several minutes less in this one if Dyess had not picked up his 3rd foul in the 2nd quarter.

Yeah, Portand does have some talent. But our starters are better than their starters. And if Afflalo and JMAX get heavy minutes, our bench is better than theirs. But you throw in a lot of Flip Murray and Mohammed, our bench can't compete with theirs, and that was the ball game. Bad loss. Not a blessed thing toward making us a playoff winner. We get a guy injured. Billups is banged up, and all Flip will do about that is maybe play Hunter a bit next game.

We are still 5-2. We still have a great team, which Flip Saunders has not managed to tear down completely yet this season (though he is mightily working on it.) Stay positive everyone, and hope Dumars steps in and rights the ship. GO PISTONS!!!!!

Lee, thanks for the recap. And I agree with pretty much all you said, except that Chauncey was 7-13 from the field, and I'd call it a good shooting percentage for a guard. Can't do much better than that on most nights. Meanwhile Rip missed a lot more than he hit, going 5-20. But defense was pretty bad pretty much all night.

I'll be at the game tomorrow. I'll see if I can get within the earshot of Flip.

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Can you print off the comments from tonights thread and stick it on Flip's chair at halftime? Maybe after reading it he will think twice and insert a couple of bench players in there midway thru the 3rd qtr. Have a good time. Normally when one us is in attendance, the Pistons win.

let's face it- Flip won't get it done. For years, we've been seeing the same thing over and over. He has real problems to create good rotations that play good together. He only trusts his starters, especially if games get close and he doesn't care if they got worn out, as long as his regular season looks good. Yes, the Pistons are still one of the elite teams in this league- but there are enough reasons to worry if they're a real contender.

Good Leecap Mr 356/357 Is it possible we can get those "rotations" to Joe so he can filter them down to Flip. This guy is killing us before we can get out of the block. Yeah we are 5-2, will lose a few games and should be happy. But there is no reason why the Pistons shouldn't be 7-0.

I would have no issues if we were 5-2 and those 2 losses were the Spurs, Mavs,Rockets, Jazz or Suns as we still have work to do. But to lose games this early in the season to the Blazers and Bulls because you are afraid to insert and train bench players falls right into the last two years unsuccessful playbook.

Now that is funny. I don't think this game is going to make 'Ol Nazr's highlight reel.

Is there a weaker player in the L than Rip? As he missed his first layup of the game the Portland announcers were saying " there is Hamilton doing what he does" and I was thinking yes he is - he's missing layups. At least no one landed on his head this time. I almost hit the floor laughing when he missed his 3rd wide open layup with 19 seconds to go in the game. Portland had totally backed off so they wouldn't foul by this point. I think half the WNBA could hit an 'and 1' against him.

The Pistons offense has zero flow to it. They had some nice movement early going to Sheed inside and getting jumpers off of that. That is the exception.

Watch how many times DET is on D and they have two guys confused and rotating out to the ball leaving another wide open. I am sure the DET News will tell me this is the players fault.

Good Leecap Mr 356/357 Is it possible we can get those "rotations" to Joe so he can filter them down to Flip. This guy is killing us before we can get out of the block. Yeah we are 5-2, will lose a few games and should be happy. But there is no reason why the Pistons shouldn't be 7-0.

I would have no issues if we were 5-2 and those 2 losses were the Spurs, Mavs,Rockets, Jazz or Suns as we still have work to do. But to lose games this early in the season to the Blazers and Bulls because you are afraid to insert and train bench players falls right into the last two years unsuccessful playbook.

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Does he even have a playbook?
Flip - We're going to work on this play tonight:
Chauncey passes the ball to Rip. Everyone just stand and watch him taking a forced jumper.

Watch how many times DET is on D and they have two guys confused and rotating out to the ball leaving another wide open. I am sure the DET News will tell me this is the players fault.

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Guess what? You're actually wrong on this one. Our good friend McCoskey is all over Rip in this game:

Might as well start with Richard Hamilton. He missed his first shot, a clean layup, and just kept firing up shot after shot, regardless of situation and regardless of the fact that too few were going in. He finished with 14 points, missing 15 of 20 shots -- many of them were layups and close-range jumpers.

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At the end of the third quarter, Hamilton earned an earful from Rasheed Wallace. After Hamilton rebounded his own missed shot with 11 seconds left, he rushed up another errant shot instead of playing for the last shot.

Have to agree on the mins in this one. 41 a piece for Sheed and Tay is too much. 39 for Rip when he just played 41 the other game. Plus Billups and Dyess are banged up and we have another game Wed night.

Portland is tough at home. They look like an older version of the Sonic team, old enough not to fold down the stretch.

losing is not something that worries me. We will lose at least 25 - 30 games in the season. what worries me is that we lose such games while our starters play those heavy minutes. Now CB and Mcdice are both hurt. Thanks Flip, way to go for the rest of the season